The EastAfrican OUTLOOK NOVEMBER 1-7,2014 S U S TA INAB L E D E VE LO PME N T GOAL S Making mode≥n cont≥aception f≥eely available globally is a good investment COMMENTARY DR BJØRN LOMBORG “Providing contraception to the 215 million women who want to avoid pregnancy would cost about $3.6 billion. It would result in 650,000 fewer newborn death.” over ever fewer resources. However, the population growth has decreased since the late 1960s and resources have not run out. There are still population T problems, but the two main ones are very probably different from what you think. The UN expects 2.4 billion more people by 2050. But contrary to common knowledge, this is not mostly about couples having lots of babies. Remember, the average woman in the developing world had 5.4 children in the early 1970s, but today that number has dropped to 2.7. In Uganda, the average woman used to have 7.1 children in 1970, today that number has dropped to 6.4. Even if every man and woman just had one baby survive, world population would still increase by 1.9 billion by 2050. Still, if families have fewer children, they can invest more in their future, giving them much greater earning potential. As countries become more prosperous, their birth rates fall. Mothers have fewer children who are bettereducated and have small families. Increasing prosperity is shared among fewer people. This is what first happened in the Old World during the Industrial Revolution, and the living standards here was a time we worried about a “population explosion,” with ever more people fighting of Europeans rose rapidly. More recently, a number of East Asian countries have gone through a similar transition, none more so than China. The good news is that it could work anywhere, also allowing African countries to catch up fast. The Chinese government slowed the growth of its population by imposing a “one-child per family” rule. This may have been good economically, but was also an infringement of human rights. Fortunately, there are other, less drastic, ways to travel this road, particularly by making modern contraception available to everyone who wants it. Population is just one key is- sue on the agenda for the international community at the moment. The problem is that, although everyone agrees that we should be doing everything we can to make poor people’s lives better, prioritising a particular set of targets is difficult. Governments and NGOs have been working together to agree how best to improve people’s lives in the period to 2030, but there are still literally hundreds of possible targets, all of them stoutly defended by someone. Having hundreds of priorities is like having none at all. That is why the Copenhagen Consensus is trying to help focus on the most effective targets, using the tools of economic analysis. Although economics does not provide the entire picture, un- derstanding where we do most good is at least a very good starting point. Groups of top economists are looking at each of 19 possible issues and making their recommendations. On the population issue, Hans-Peter Kohler and Jere Behrman from the University of Pennsylvania argue that making modern contraception freely available is a phenomenally good investment. Providing contraception to the 215 million women who today want to avoid pregnancy but cannot, would cost about $3.6 billion. It would annually result in 640,000 fewer newborn deaths, 150,000 fewer maternal deaths and 600,000 fewer children who lose their mother. Estimating this misery in economic terms may seem cold, but it makes it possible to compare contraception to other big challenges. In total, contra- Contraception — including these free condoms at a clinic in Kenya — would avoid about $145 billion in human misery. Picture: File ception would avoid about $145 billion in human misery. That alone means that every dollar spent will do $40 worth of good. But experts also estimate that with fewer children, parents can afford better schooling, while society benefits from fewer costs from children and more income from a larger working population. Those benefits total $288 billion per year, making a dollar spent on contraception do $120 worth of good. But development also means growth in older people and possibly shrinking populations. This is already happening in Europe and Japan, but will also start soon in China and eventually most places. Today, 12 per cent of the world’s population is above 60, but in 36 years, that will almost double to 21 per cent. Uganda has fewer than one million people older than 65 today, but will have about five million by mid-century. Although ageing may seem a less pressing problem than global population growth, it is real and has to be tackled. Policies aimed at increasing the birth rate in Europe and elsewhere have not been successful, but there is a better solution: Allow more migration. Properly managed, this can benefit the receiving nation (getting more workers), the migrants (getting better pay) and the sending country (getting remittances). In total, it turns out that the benefits are more than forty times the cost. There are other promising tar- gets, which are more difficult to cost – discouraging early retirement and dependency, for example. But overall, the economists make a powerful argument for why contraception and migration should be prioritised on the list of global targets. D≥. Bjø≥n Lombo≥g, an adjunct p≥ofesso≥ at the Copenhagen Business School, di≥ects the Copenhagen Consensus Cent≥e, ≥anking the sma≥test solutions to the wo≥ld’s biggest p≥oblems by cost-benefit. He is the autho≥ of The Sceptical Envi≥onmentalist and Cool It. EA oil and gas secto≥ in di≥e need of inf≥ast≥uctu≥e By SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT The EastAfrican OFFSHORE EXPLORATION has increased exponentially over the past five years but East Africa will first need to secure financing to develop infrastructure if it is to gain momentum, the Standard Bank Group said on Wednesday. Standard’s director of oil and gas Charlie Hou- ston said Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania will need $50 billion to $75 billion in energy investments over the next five to seven years. Mr Houston said crude oil and natural gas resources will require associated infrastructure like export pipelines, refineries and LNG facilities on a continent that lags behind with regard to energy access. “Development of oil and gas across East Africa will be staggered over time. The success of initial development will drive further investment as recoverable resources increase with further exploration and appraisal,” he said. Tullow Oil and Africa Oil Corporation have discovered 600 million barrels of crude oil in South Lokichar basin in northwestern Kenya. Oil resources in the Albertine basin in western Uganda were revised upwards in August by the government to 6.5 billion barrels after further appraisal work. Mr Houston said the immediate challenge is for stakeholders to agree on the commercial ownership structure of the pipeline to the Kenyan Coast, from where crude will be shipped to export markets. “Without this agreement and the pipeline, the vast bulk of the discovered reserves cannot be monetised and will not attract the necessary investment from the international investor base,” he said. Kenya and Uganda are next year set to jointly start building next year a $4 billion crude oil export pipeline running 1,300 kilometres from Hoima in Uganda to Lamu in Kenya. Completion of the line is expected in 2018. The Anadarko and Eni discoveries in Areas 1 and 4 in Mozambique could hold more than 100 trillion cubic feet of gas while in Tanzania, BG Group and Ophir Energy have also found major gas deposits, as has Statoil and its partner ExxonMobil. However, before that can happen, a huge challenge is to build facilities to turn the reserves into liquefied natural gas, which can then be shipped to the markets. Associate infrastructure like export pipelines, refineries and LNG facilities is sorely needed. Picture: File 35